Spanish Prime Minister: We're The Victim of A Free Market Conspiracy To Make The Socialist Euro System Look Like A Failure

Spain's looming
financial crisis wouldn't be complete without angry accusations
that speculators, not economic fundamentals, are to blame for the
nation's fiscal problems.

Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero has even
taken the usual speculator-bashing a step further by wondering
whether speculators shorting the Euro are part of a conspiracy,
not to make money, but to discredit the European model of
increased regulation.

...members of the Spanish government have cast caution to the
winds and declared their economy is the victim of a still
vaster plot that goes beyond profiteering and a desire to destroy
the euro (the charges level led in Greece). No,
according to José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the prime minister,
and José Blanco, his transport minister, the conspiracy goes
beyond financial speculators to take in opinion-writers from the
foreign press, whose goal is to derail European attempts to
regulate financial institutions and markets more tightly.

...

Mr Blanco told Cadena Ser radio that attacks on Spain were
attacks on the euro, and were "rather dirty dealings" on the part
of speculators, who: "now that they see we are emerging from the
crisis, do not want to see better regulation of their activities,
[but] want to be free to carry on pursuing their own interests...
None of what is happening, including editorials in some foreign
media with their apocalyptic commentaries, is happening by
chance, or innocently. It is the result of certain special
interests."

...

Here is Mr Zapatero: "There is an attack underway by
speculators against the euro, against tougher financial
regulation of the financial system and of the markets".